


i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

by cassandra_leeds (The_Circadian)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels are Dicks, Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Other, Reincarnation, Sacred Trees, Suicide, Vessel Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Circadian/pseuds/cassandra_leeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set AUishly beginning somewhere in the 5x05 to 5x06 bracket. </p><p>Castiel has a plan to hide himself from Heaven forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> For Licia.

  
  
_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_  
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart  
  
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)  
  
  
-E. E. Cummings  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It wasn’t a butter knife. It was Dean’s pocketknife.

Castiel held the knife in his hand easily enough; he was a warrior in any form.

“I’ve been looking for that,” Dean’s voice wavered.

He knew when Castiel had swiped it – he could still feel the warmth of the kiss from the day before, heart-stopping in its immediacy after weeks of hovering, weeks of holding himself just far enough away from that cliff.

  
  


In the dark sanctuary of another motel room, Castiel had pulled Dean in.

There had been no words, just rushed warmth and breath. Cas’ hands slipping into his coat and Dean relaxing into what he’d skirted away from for so long. This closeness, this boundary broken. This breath in his lungs finally shared with Cas.

It was soft. It was all so soft that when Castiel had pulled away until their lips no longer met, it took Dean a moment to realize he’d lost contact. His eyes opened to find Cas still close and he stared down at the sweet spray of eyelashes, the reddened cheeks and thought, how? How can you not be human like this? And yet he could still feel that he stood with an alien creature, a superhuman being, so powerful that when Dean was still like this he could feel just how much  _more_  Castiel was.

It was over so fast.

There was nothing to be said, though. No,  _I’ve wanted…_  No,  _One more time…_  No declarations or half-formed hopes of plans. They’d gone out as fast as they were lit. Snuffed out like matches one after another in the rain.

This world had no place for them; the realization crushed down like it had been waiting all this time to fall, for the fools below to give in to the tragedy of it, waiting for their confession to cover them in the impossibility of them ever having this. Sam would always need Dean and Dean would always need Sam. And Castiel, now turned renegade, would be chased. All of them would be chased. Forever.

A small flare burned bright in Dean’s chest just long enough for him to speak.

“Do the sigils on your ribs, Cas,” Dean whispered. “Hide.” Castiel met his eyes. “There’s no shame in wanting to live.”

Castiel sighed, a small but deep breath, and shook his head. “I can’t do that. My vessel… It won’t work, Dean.”

When Dean reached out one more time, Castiel just barely leaned into the hand placed on his chest looking Dean in the eye. “There has to be something,” Dean said and Castiel’s hand covered his so gently it hurt. It was an answer. “You’re giving up?”

Castiel shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Dean sat in the Impala alone that night, rain coming down all around until the world was a numbing roar, anger and grief battling under his skin until he was vibrating with it as much as the sound of the storm.

He swore to himself, chest feeling open and sore as a wound.

In the early morning hours he briefly dreamed he had stolen a pair of angel wings and sewn them to his coat. They wouldn’t work right no matter how hard he tried. And Cas was so far away. How would he get there now?

 

An hour before sunrise Sam was back, Castiel was nowhere to be found, and Sam and Dean packed up, the road under them in moments, the next job muttered in soft tones between them over maps and hours.

“Sam.” Dean said it softly, felt the humiliation of reaching out, even this much, before he even spoke the words. “Do you think Cas could ever, you know, be like one of us?”

Sam looked puzzled for a good few seconds. “What? Like a hunter?”

Dean felt his stomach go sour. That word suddenly seemed so ugly.

“Like human?” Sam tried.

And that word was so much uglier.

“No. Forget about it.”

He had the strangest feeling resting right next to the wrongness of the words exchanged - what he imagined was the sensation of a phantom limb. He placed he hand to his chest pocket, knife now gone, and knew deep down something terrible was happening.

  
  


The blade glinted, cool colored metal in the strong grip of his hand.

“It’s the only way, Dean,” his voice was calm. The terrible calm of someone who has decided to die. “They’ll never stop coming after me now.”

Castiel, bare chested in the dark, lamplight making him orange, a glowing warm body in the cold of this room. Dean could see the sigils he had painted thinly over himself, shining against smooth skin.

Sam was picking up food, wouldn’t be back for a good fifteen minutes. This talk down was Dean’s. “Cas, give me the knife.”

“We can be together,” Castiel insisted.

It hurt, but Dean managed to piece it all together. “You’re cutting out your Grace?” It was quiet, like he couldn’t believe it. “Cas, that’s not a solution. Even if you survive. I’ll never see you again.” He couldn’t help the crack in his voice at that, the leaden thump of his heart in his chest, helpless and betrayed. Dean held out his hand, a life line, hoping to God that Cas could see that. Hoping there was a chance Cas would listen.

“Cas, please, give me the knife.”

“Have faith, Dean. I’ll find my way back to you.” Castiel said with a soft smile, chillingly calm. He placed the tip of the knife to his skin amid the chaotic design and slowly pressed down. “You have to have faith.”

“No, Cas, don’t—”

It was like the slow motion of an earthquake, or a dream where you can’t manage to move your legs to run up the stairs. The still horror of the world right before it drops from under you. Dean couldn’t reach him. Unknown physics pushed him down, back, and away.

The room glowed white hot, screaming white. Whiter.

Castiel was screaming, “… your eyes, Dean!”

And that was the last Dean could remember.

That was the last time he heard Castiel’s voice.

 

Sam's jacket was rough against Dean’s cheek, hot hand cupping his face. “Dean, come on, wake up,” Sam’s voice was still panicked, even as Dean moaned. Sam’s voice shook through him, “What happened? What  _happened?_ ”

“He’s gone, Sam,” Dean choked. “He’s gone. He did it.”

The walls were iridescent with the residual, everything dusted with bluish glow. Blood was on the floor, huge dark stain soaked into the carpet.

Castiel’s clothes were scattered everywhere, the ones he had still been wearing, ripped apart.

Dean felt the sob rise up in his chest, made it stay there.

“We’ll find him,” Sam said looking over the scene, and Dean could hear in the way Sam’s words rushed out, still carefully measured, just how disturbed he was.

Dean didn’t have it in him to say anything to that.

 

Dean slept for three days, ate once, and spoke less than a dozen words to anyone. Sam made sure they found a hotel that looked nothing like the one they had stayed in last. And Dean thanked him finally a week later when Sam found them a job.

He didn’t say anything when two months later in New Jersey Sam pushed over a couple pages of research to him in their hotel room.

It was a photocopy of an article on a comet that had fallen over the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania. Same date as Castiel’s self-destruction.

“You want me to come with you?” Sam was obviously choosing his words. Dean could hear the ‘need’ in that ‘want.’

Dean shook his head, slowly overwhelmed by how grateful he was - for Sam, for the love between them that knew no off switch - and how lost he was anyway.

“Thank you,” Dean said quietly.

 

The trail took him a day to get up even with GPS. It was undrivable pretty soon into the trip and he left the car by the side of the road, feeling naked in the wild air.

He walked for hours, past boulders and tall trees on either side, air filled with the stillness that only the noise of so much life can create. The ancientness of it was mythical. And he thought of how strange it was that this land seemed new when it wasn’t. How much older were the dark woods of fairy tales?

The wet earth skidded under his boots, gravely and knotted with roots, smelling of rain and decay.

He could hear himself chanting Castiel’s name in his head when he wasn’t looking down at the GPS map held in cold, numb fingers. He could hear it:  _‘Castiel’_ in Dean’s own voice, could feel it like a tether, spiraling out from his chest and up this trail, trying to find a place to secure him onto.

He passed a graveyard, walked on past countless basswood and maple, another half hour in, a creek, climbed up to where the forests grew cooler, the trees denser. The air was moist with them.

It all came down to what was at the end of the next few miles. He knew this. He knew that depending on what he found here, he’d get an answer that would change the rest of his life.

Please, yes. Please, no.

He stopped after an hour, breathing deep, still two miles to go, stood in the road. There was the itch of company and Dean turned, nearly shouted, jumping back as an onlooking deer looked down on him, confused, and then bounded off into the hills, as startled as he was.

Dean cursed to himself, feeling slightly sobered of his grief for a moment with the pump of adrenaline.

He looked down at the GPS map and doubt hit him in the gut, terror building slow as a headache.

He suddenly didn’t know if he could do this, face this. It was an answer to a question he was beginning to wish had been rhetorical.  _Are you out there?_

And then he felt it. It started as a warm buzz, right under his breastbone, and continued until it filled his whole chest, golden and burning with unimaginable intensity, so pure it hurt.

And his feet were moving.

Cold air in his lungs made them feel overused, his heart hammering under his clothes. Inside, that singing warmth radiated, feet hitting the ground in painful flashes and, closer, oh, god, he was close.

Consciousness became musical - the sound of his body, the sound of the world, the beat of his steps and his heart and his breath.

And then, there ahead, reaching up to the canopy above and beyond, it stood. Mammoth-like and terrifying.

He halted.

Dean stood and stared and dropped his phone, GPS forgotten, because he knew he was there.

This was it. This was it.

Dean stepped over the roots, climbed hesitantly closer. He approached this tree like anything and yet like nothing else he’d ever had to come near. Not a monster. Not a friend. Not a relic. Not a weapon. It seemed to swallow him, the familiarity of it in all its monumental glory, hitting him like a flashback from a dream from long ago. It was like he’d seen it as a child somehow.

He reached the trunk of this sleeping giant - not sleeping at all it seemed, because when he looked up at it, towering up and up hundreds of feet above, it was swaying in the wind, branches touching one another, passing touches between them, and it felt like he was meeting someone again.

Because it was Castiel. Part of him anyway.

The rough surface of the bark totally engulfed his vision as he looked forward again, the smell of pine filled his lungs, sweet and bitter as chocolate. This was Castiel’s Grace, held safe in living wood.

A small pine cone dropped beside him with a whispery thud.

This meant Castiel made it. He was somewhere. He was alive.

Dean placed his hand on the cool wood, fingers falling between the rough cracks of it.

_You have to have faith._

The wood felt warm under Dean’s hand now from his heat, that humming in his chest like a guitar string still vibrating on, tone as beautiful as a song.

Dean nodded to himself and didn’t feel the grief the same way now. The sorrow held a pearl of hope in it he silently swore to build on, a seed he’d plant deep in himself and nurture until it grew as tall as this hemlock. Told himself that when he found Castiel he’d have his own monument housing his faith. And Castiel, even if he didn’t love him or recognize him, would feel welcome, would feel it, would know it. Somehow.

  
  
  


Every town they stop at, Dean reads the birth records for the date Castiel left them.

He checks in on the families as a meter reader or a post man and watches family after family with these children, now four years old, now five.

He’s still hasn’t lost hope. One of them is Cas. One of them he’ll know when they eye him from the window or the swingset. Dean will be graying and it will have been six years. Maybe ten. Maybe fifteen. One of them will tilt their head just so, eyes staring deep into him, and they’ll see the branches and light.

One of them. One day.

 

 


End file.
